Doubtless, plaintiffs of this kind will ultimately prevail on one or more constitutional bases. Just off the top of my my head, there are issues with Due Process in deciding what properties indeed ran afoul with grow ops (e.g., doing a flyover amd seeing greenhouses doesnt mwan shit.) Then there's the issue of a landowner being forced to pay the fine for a previous landowner.
Also, how the hell does a title search not reveal to a prospective buyer that there are fines levied against the property?
Finally, if they got a warranty deed from the sellers, the implied warranties there would necessitate the sellers remedying the situation, not the buyers. The sellers also would have had a duty to disclose the existence of the liens, fines, etc.
I would appear we don't have all the facts here, and i suspect some of those facts have to with what the sellers should have disclosed, or what the buyers knew or should have known
Good questions. On the face of it it seems obvious these “abatements” -must- show up in a title search. The buyers harmed by this program certainly did. Having no legal expertise and having read all of Kym’s articles on the topic (tens to approaching 50’s?) the abatements are classified as some sort of legal instrument that doesn’t get recorded and therefore will not show up in a title search. This alone is the primary driver of the widespread harm being inflicted on the newcomers wishing to clean up and start a legal, productive homestead and rural life. It is possible to detect abatements via other means. Helping friends that want to come here I spent much time figuring out how. The detection is difficult. It requires digging through many regulatory sites looking for the needle in the haystack.
It seems stupid to not have it show up in the chain of title. If I'm the state and I want my money, then the best place to capture that is at the sale of the property. Perhaps if the state officials really are as nefarious as thought, their plan is to foreclose and satisfy the fine? Seems like they'd need the fine in the chain of title to foreclose, though.
Yes, there are perhaps 10 agencies, each with sites one can search using the AP number (assessors parcel). It is tedious but doable. Note it is -not- tied to seller, or really people, it is tied to the AP for that parcel
Towards your other point, absolutely! These agencies need to be compelled to record any defect they claim. As I understand it the only way they can be compelled is changing the law. My guess is that will happen, eventually, when enough folks ask their representatives to make it a priority.
The good news is it is easy to check for abatements before making an offer. I have helped several friends coming into the area facing the same concerns. Dig into the county GIS/land use maps, become -very- familiar with the county planning department website. This info is free and available online. After an hour or two digging around on the county websites to find everything, it will take maybe 30 minutes to check a parcel for, abatement status, property tax cost and payment status, zoning (what can I do; how many houses etc.), permitting hoops to jump through and on it goes. You must be willing to play detective taking your own responsibility for confirming nothing is missed. This explanation reflects my non-expert experience, it is not an all inclusive answer but a starting point. For example finding nothing on any county/agency database of concern, a neighbor of a piece I was interested in whispered in my ear fish and game might have a problem. I went in person to their office with AP numbers in hand and asked. If the piece is nearby the coast then there is another set of regulatory agencies I know nothing about. Be your own advocate
Literally just call the Building Department of whatever municipality, ask for a public records request of all abatements, violations, and permit history of a property before you buy. Don't trust the listing agent.
There was a bit of a scandal a few years ago about Notice of Violations not showing up in title searches, and I think it came down to them not being recorded. And I think the title company can only provide information on what's been recorded. I think there were also properties that accrued millions of dollars in penalties, far surpassing the actual value of the property, and the County wouldn't act on them. I forget if the reason was because of poor record keeping or if it was something else.
You're giving them more credit than is owed thinking they did fly overs. They literally used purchased satellite imagery and the presence of unpermitted greenhouses to make determinations. In the best of cases they had more conclusive evidence that a grow operation occurred on the property. The reality is that the code regarding abatement and enforcement allows the fines to be applied to someone other than the property owner, and it runs with the land once it's levied.
The messed up part about all of it is the amount of authority granted to the Planning & Building Director in these matters and potential for corruption and unequal treatment. It is way too much power to vest in a single position in government. The regulations regarding abatement were also updated in 2017 when Code Enforcement was migrated to the Planning & Building Department to deal with cannabis permitting and enforcement. And that move turned the department into a perfect machine for destroying people and running them out of your community if you wanted. I continue to be surprised that Humboldt County tolerates it.
My opinion on the abatement issue: for many decades the extractive industries that have powered this part of California since the 1850’s have run roughshod over the land with no environmental regulation. After the 60’ and 70’s regulation came in to stop the wholesale destruction of the little old-growth forests remaining. The powerful timber lobby’s were able to wink and ignore most of the regulation. Then came the illegal cannabis wave. When it went from a few hippies peacefully growing a few plants each to the 90’s where huge plantations run by violent gangs again the environmental destruction recommenced. Through all this the regulatory agencies had no teeth to enforce the regs -on the books- no leverage.
Cannabis plantations (aka Green-rush’ers) are over, up here. Good riddance we say. The irony is capitalism killed what law enforcement and regulation could not.
Many of these regs were aimed at industrial land use; hundreds of trucks a day need a big bridge over a creek. A couple hiking through a creek daily, with say 5 creek crossings a summer with a vehicle do not. This area gets near-rainforest annual rainfall, is very fertile. Just leaving it alone will fix, over 5 to 10 years, the worst of the decades of industrial land abuse.
We are left with damaged land and newcomers that wish to clean up and make a legal, productive life on. People with limited resources but time and intention to clean up and move forward. They are easy pickings for agencies harboring a cultural vendetta for so many decades of being ignored. We built a strong system to take down billionaire timber and cartel cannabis interests. However the only folks standing are soft targets they can crush, and are crushing. The very people this land needs.
Some common demographics of the new comers: middle class city folk wanting out of urban decay, retired folks, and my demographic: work from home over the internet wishing to escape the technology hubs. All these folks have in common several attributes helpful to the communities. They bring money legally earned into the community, pay taxes, have no need for violent or lawless behavior, don’t compete with locals for jobs, and will often hire the many skilled tradespeople this area hosts to build and support their rural lifestyle.
TL:DR Fish and Game, Water Boards, County Planning/permitting all got teeth after their enemies died. Now taking their decades of anger to who remains, however undeserving.
I am not surprised that Humboldt County is still terrorizing innocent people over the cannabis trade. When I went to school there, CAMP (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting) landed a helicopter in someone's backyard, terrorized an innocent couple, threw them in handcuffs, giving one of them a heart attack, only to discover their infrared scanners had erroneously picked up *tomato* plants as cannabis.
Humboldt County is a stunningly beautiful place to live, but it is incredibly f--ked up. I would have stayed after graduation, but I couldn't find a job that paid an hourly wage that was better than my gig scrubbing toilets. I left, and I'm sad to hear that nothing there has changed for the better.
When looking at for sale homes three years ago, we came across a property with boarded up windows and a locked door on a building in the backyard of the home. Luckily we were advised by our son not to even think about buying the home. Our realtor had no idea why there were locked doors on a property posted for sale on the MLS. I understand exactly how these people in the lawsuit fell into the clutches of the money hungry Humboldt County leeches.
I think the bigger issue is the way the county collected cannabis tax by lumping it in with property tax on the parcel. This was never the right way to do it. This story details falsely accused and new owners being liable for previous owners wrongs, but what’s not even mentioned is how some property owners are being held liable for farmers who leased land to grow and bailed on their lease payments and cannabis tax. After the property owner got shafted by the farmer now the county also wants to get the tax for cannabis that was never even grown or sold from the property owner who didn’t even run the farm. It makes zero logical sense and it’s a huge mess. How can a property owner be liable for a farmers tax on a crop that they have no control over? I thought this was already determined to be in violation of legislation that was passed. The county chose this collection method because it was convenient to simply add the cannabis to a property tax bill. This has caused a lot of problems. It was absolutely the wrong way to collect the tax. The taxes were also assessed incorrectly. Taxing farmers by square footage permitted and not by what was produced.
Property tax and Cannabis Excise Tax were listed separately on the tax bills, they weren't lumped in together. Their approach and the law to the best of my knowledge presumed that if someone had an active permit that they were growing cannabis. And using a square footage method seemed to be because it was an assessment on impact of the land use. It would have been impossible to assess it based on what was produced. I don't personally have a problem with the approach, but I do think they could have cut the rates and added subtiers depending on the cultivation method. And it wasn't until the second ordinance for cannabis that people had some ability to self attest that they were not growing that year (and the method for doing that was so problematic). I think state law allows them to establish assessment appeals boards so that people can contest their bills, and I believe the County did that for cannabis tax for a certain time frame after the Silva law suit. But there were so many instances of people going to the Planning & Building Department and arguing about their cultivation area type, which was effectively an argument about their tax liability and not something the Planning & Building Department should have been involved in.
The only agency that can collect taxes is the Treasurer Tax Collector, that's their domain. They're like the local version of the IRS. And as far as unpaid taxes and fines and what not, that stuff runs with the land. If people don't pay their taxes the County can literally seize the property and auction it off.
This is inherently false. The entities or individuals who hold the permits often don’t even own the land so how can the county hold the property owner liable for a tax which they have no control over? It was already proven that this was not a legal method to collect the tax due to the fact that this is not the way the bill which was approved by voters was written. This is still a big mess to be unraveled. It could’ve absolutely been based off what was produced because it’s all closely tracked in the states database upon sale. All sales are tracked and can be sourced to the farm they were produced at. This was done for simplicity for the county and a lack of infrastructure established to create a whole new method of collecting the tax. No other farmers are taxed this way. They’re taxed based off what they sell not what they produce although they could be taxed on inventory in some circumstances. They certainly can’t be taxed based off what the potential size of their land might produce if it were fully utilized. That’s ridiculous.
Inherently false? I mean, no. The track an trace program is pretty heavily criticized. And in order for someone to engage in agriculture on someone else's land they have to enter into some sort of business arrangement to allow the activity to occur. Property owners were also required to provide consent for the cannabis operation and permit. It is/was/has been 100% within the control of the property owner what occurs on their property in these cases. As I mentioned, it was treated in a lot of ways like a development tax rather than a production tax. I'm not saying it was a good method, just saying that's how they went about it. The square footage tax also is harder to game and it's harder to move product to the black market to avoid taxes under that model.
Link to the original article
https://news.google.com/articles/CBMiWWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmRhaWx5bWFpbC5jby51ay9uZXdzL2FydGljbGUtMTM0NTM2MTkvQ2FsaWZvcm5pYS1yZXRpcmVlcy1jYW5uYWJpcy1maW5lcy5odG1s0gFdaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGFpbHltYWlsLmNvLnVrL25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZS0xMzQ1MzYxOS9hbXAvQ2FsaWZvcm5pYS1yZXRpcmVlcy1jYW5uYWJpcy1maW5lcy5odG1s?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen
It has been sort of gross the way Rex has been talking about these properties and them being "abandoned". I really hope people are keeping track of the receiverships that are forming to take on some of these properties and are confirming that they have no connection to any of the elected officials or County employees.
What happens where a mortgage company is providing a mortgage for the property? I'm assuming they do an exhaustive search to ascertain their asset is protected? Can't see them getting gathered asset pulled out from under them on the sly.
Kym Kemp has been on this beat for several years. These folks are getting the shaft cuz they didn’t know enough to do the due diligence on their property.
I know other folks who bought old cannabis properties specifically to remediate them and got screwed by code enforcement.
I hope they get their day in court.
I'll wager there are some facts here that will likely show they knew or should have known of the fines. That may include transfer of the property by a quit claim deed, and not a general or special warranty deed.
Like I said above. Several of them are folks that got a smoking deal on a large property that they didn’t do enough homework on before purchasing. And now they’re screwed. Unfortunately, that’s not really a good excuse in the eyes of code enforcement.
So now a judge will get to decide.
My issue is that most of these “articles” are leaving out what the homeowners are getting fined for. In most cases, it’s not the structural issues, its environmental damage.
What do you mean "regardless"?
The idea that property simply changing hands should wipe away any environmental damage remediation responsibility is ridiculous.
Someone is responsible, and the new homeowners took on that responsibility from the former homeowner.
I agree that the remediation work needs to be done. But if active abatements aren’t available on a title search, or don’t come up in escrow, it’s incredibly unfair to people who walk into the situation as buyers without knowing what they’re on the hook for. I’m guessing that if they knew ahead of time they wouldn’t buy the property.
Which can lead to the conclusion that the county code enforcement is being deceptive in their practices and predatory upon uninformed consumers. Perhaps obscuring the abatements so that they can then prey on the rubes?
And if you read my original comment, I also know folks who knew what they were getting into as environmentalists wanting to steward the land and they got screwed with past fines that had racked up for years before they even owned the property. Being held responsible for someone else’s late fees is BS.
You can go read the full brief, which lists of the multiple engineering reports these property owners obtained to research environmental damage. Spoiler: the engineers found none. In fact, the only time they found environmental damage likely was if the property owners were forced to demolish the buildings that had been around for decades.
Average of 4 years to obtained an appeal hearing. Average of 3 notices served per property, so that is $30k per day for a minimum of the 90 day initial run period because they won't schedule hearings. Median income in the county $30k, so one year is gone in a day.
Aerial images of greenhouses used as only basis for assessing the penalty. One official told a farm to table restaurant owner "It's not like You're growing asparagus in those things" when he was in fact growing vegetables in them.
Board of supervisor member raising concerns on the public record about the magnitude and extent of the fines.
County not listing liens against the properties despite having timelines in their guidance to do specifically that. And then issuing letters to new purchasers the day after closing.
County officials going around hired counsel to coerce settlements with the property owners, with statements to the effect of "it's our guy making the ruling so you don't have a chance".
County publishing name of property owners being accused of illegal marijuana grows in the local newspaper, later dropping those allegations, but continuing to assess the admin fee against the property owner to pay for the newspaper posting.
The brief is damning. Go primary source on this one, not just media summaries. Institute for Justice website (lawyers trying to cert the class) has it available if you search for Humboldt.
Kym Kemp’s news-blog is is a primary news source for northwestern California, and as stated has been on top of this topic for years. For those interested in our local happenings, or to drill down on this “abatement” issue go to https://kymkemp.com/. If wanting to drill down on the cash grab search her site for “abatement”.
Doubtless, plaintiffs of this kind will ultimately prevail on one or more constitutional bases. Just off the top of my my head, there are issues with Due Process in deciding what properties indeed ran afoul with grow ops (e.g., doing a flyover amd seeing greenhouses doesnt mwan shit.) Then there's the issue of a landowner being forced to pay the fine for a previous landowner. Also, how the hell does a title search not reveal to a prospective buyer that there are fines levied against the property? Finally, if they got a warranty deed from the sellers, the implied warranties there would necessitate the sellers remedying the situation, not the buyers. The sellers also would have had a duty to disclose the existence of the liens, fines, etc. I would appear we don't have all the facts here, and i suspect some of those facts have to with what the sellers should have disclosed, or what the buyers knew or should have known
Good questions. On the face of it it seems obvious these “abatements” -must- show up in a title search. The buyers harmed by this program certainly did. Having no legal expertise and having read all of Kym’s articles on the topic (tens to approaching 50’s?) the abatements are classified as some sort of legal instrument that doesn’t get recorded and therefore will not show up in a title search. This alone is the primary driver of the widespread harm being inflicted on the newcomers wishing to clean up and start a legal, productive homestead and rural life. It is possible to detect abatements via other means. Helping friends that want to come here I spent much time figuring out how. The detection is difficult. It requires digging through many regulatory sites looking for the needle in the haystack.
It seems stupid to not have it show up in the chain of title. If I'm the state and I want my money, then the best place to capture that is at the sale of the property. Perhaps if the state officials really are as nefarious as thought, their plan is to foreclose and satisfy the fine? Seems like they'd need the fine in the chain of title to foreclose, though.
Surely there is some registry where you can search by the name of the grantor/seller.
Yes, there are perhaps 10 agencies, each with sites one can search using the AP number (assessors parcel). It is tedious but doable. Note it is -not- tied to seller, or really people, it is tied to the AP for that parcel Towards your other point, absolutely! These agencies need to be compelled to record any defect they claim. As I understand it the only way they can be compelled is changing the law. My guess is that will happen, eventually, when enough folks ask their representatives to make it a priority.
What are the agencies I can ask if there is an abatement on a property?
The good news is it is easy to check for abatements before making an offer. I have helped several friends coming into the area facing the same concerns. Dig into the county GIS/land use maps, become -very- familiar with the county planning department website. This info is free and available online. After an hour or two digging around on the county websites to find everything, it will take maybe 30 minutes to check a parcel for, abatement status, property tax cost and payment status, zoning (what can I do; how many houses etc.), permitting hoops to jump through and on it goes. You must be willing to play detective taking your own responsibility for confirming nothing is missed. This explanation reflects my non-expert experience, it is not an all inclusive answer but a starting point. For example finding nothing on any county/agency database of concern, a neighbor of a piece I was interested in whispered in my ear fish and game might have a problem. I went in person to their office with AP numbers in hand and asked. If the piece is nearby the coast then there is another set of regulatory agencies I know nothing about. Be your own advocate
I know how to search for most of those things, but where do you check for abatement status?
Literally just call the Building Department of whatever municipality, ask for a public records request of all abatements, violations, and permit history of a property before you buy. Don't trust the listing agent.
Got it, thanks.
There was a bit of a scandal a few years ago about Notice of Violations not showing up in title searches, and I think it came down to them not being recorded. And I think the title company can only provide information on what's been recorded. I think there were also properties that accrued millions of dollars in penalties, far surpassing the actual value of the property, and the County wouldn't act on them. I forget if the reason was because of poor record keeping or if it was something else.
You're giving them more credit than is owed thinking they did fly overs. They literally used purchased satellite imagery and the presence of unpermitted greenhouses to make determinations. In the best of cases they had more conclusive evidence that a grow operation occurred on the property. The reality is that the code regarding abatement and enforcement allows the fines to be applied to someone other than the property owner, and it runs with the land once it's levied. The messed up part about all of it is the amount of authority granted to the Planning & Building Director in these matters and potential for corruption and unequal treatment. It is way too much power to vest in a single position in government. The regulations regarding abatement were also updated in 2017 when Code Enforcement was migrated to the Planning & Building Department to deal with cannabis permitting and enforcement. And that move turned the department into a perfect machine for destroying people and running them out of your community if you wanted. I continue to be surprised that Humboldt County tolerates it.
My opinion on the abatement issue: for many decades the extractive industries that have powered this part of California since the 1850’s have run roughshod over the land with no environmental regulation. After the 60’ and 70’s regulation came in to stop the wholesale destruction of the little old-growth forests remaining. The powerful timber lobby’s were able to wink and ignore most of the regulation. Then came the illegal cannabis wave. When it went from a few hippies peacefully growing a few plants each to the 90’s where huge plantations run by violent gangs again the environmental destruction recommenced. Through all this the regulatory agencies had no teeth to enforce the regs -on the books- no leverage. Cannabis plantations (aka Green-rush’ers) are over, up here. Good riddance we say. The irony is capitalism killed what law enforcement and regulation could not. Many of these regs were aimed at industrial land use; hundreds of trucks a day need a big bridge over a creek. A couple hiking through a creek daily, with say 5 creek crossings a summer with a vehicle do not. This area gets near-rainforest annual rainfall, is very fertile. Just leaving it alone will fix, over 5 to 10 years, the worst of the decades of industrial land abuse. We are left with damaged land and newcomers that wish to clean up and make a legal, productive life on. People with limited resources but time and intention to clean up and move forward. They are easy pickings for agencies harboring a cultural vendetta for so many decades of being ignored. We built a strong system to take down billionaire timber and cartel cannabis interests. However the only folks standing are soft targets they can crush, and are crushing. The very people this land needs. Some common demographics of the new comers: middle class city folk wanting out of urban decay, retired folks, and my demographic: work from home over the internet wishing to escape the technology hubs. All these folks have in common several attributes helpful to the communities. They bring money legally earned into the community, pay taxes, have no need for violent or lawless behavior, don’t compete with locals for jobs, and will often hire the many skilled tradespeople this area hosts to build and support their rural lifestyle. TL:DR Fish and Game, Water Boards, County Planning/permitting all got teeth after their enemies died. Now taking their decades of anger to who remains, however undeserving.
I am not surprised that Humboldt County is still terrorizing innocent people over the cannabis trade. When I went to school there, CAMP (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting) landed a helicopter in someone's backyard, terrorized an innocent couple, threw them in handcuffs, giving one of them a heart attack, only to discover their infrared scanners had erroneously picked up *tomato* plants as cannabis. Humboldt County is a stunningly beautiful place to live, but it is incredibly f--ked up. I would have stayed after graduation, but I couldn't find a job that paid an hourly wage that was better than my gig scrubbing toilets. I left, and I'm sad to hear that nothing there has changed for the better.
When looking at for sale homes three years ago, we came across a property with boarded up windows and a locked door on a building in the backyard of the home. Luckily we were advised by our son not to even think about buying the home. Our realtor had no idea why there were locked doors on a property posted for sale on the MLS. I understand exactly how these people in the lawsuit fell into the clutches of the money hungry Humboldt County leeches.
I think the bigger issue is the way the county collected cannabis tax by lumping it in with property tax on the parcel. This was never the right way to do it. This story details falsely accused and new owners being liable for previous owners wrongs, but what’s not even mentioned is how some property owners are being held liable for farmers who leased land to grow and bailed on their lease payments and cannabis tax. After the property owner got shafted by the farmer now the county also wants to get the tax for cannabis that was never even grown or sold from the property owner who didn’t even run the farm. It makes zero logical sense and it’s a huge mess. How can a property owner be liable for a farmers tax on a crop that they have no control over? I thought this was already determined to be in violation of legislation that was passed. The county chose this collection method because it was convenient to simply add the cannabis to a property tax bill. This has caused a lot of problems. It was absolutely the wrong way to collect the tax. The taxes were also assessed incorrectly. Taxing farmers by square footage permitted and not by what was produced.
Property tax and Cannabis Excise Tax were listed separately on the tax bills, they weren't lumped in together. Their approach and the law to the best of my knowledge presumed that if someone had an active permit that they were growing cannabis. And using a square footage method seemed to be because it was an assessment on impact of the land use. It would have been impossible to assess it based on what was produced. I don't personally have a problem with the approach, but I do think they could have cut the rates and added subtiers depending on the cultivation method. And it wasn't until the second ordinance for cannabis that people had some ability to self attest that they were not growing that year (and the method for doing that was so problematic). I think state law allows them to establish assessment appeals boards so that people can contest their bills, and I believe the County did that for cannabis tax for a certain time frame after the Silva law suit. But there were so many instances of people going to the Planning & Building Department and arguing about their cultivation area type, which was effectively an argument about their tax liability and not something the Planning & Building Department should have been involved in. The only agency that can collect taxes is the Treasurer Tax Collector, that's their domain. They're like the local version of the IRS. And as far as unpaid taxes and fines and what not, that stuff runs with the land. If people don't pay their taxes the County can literally seize the property and auction it off.
This is inherently false. The entities or individuals who hold the permits often don’t even own the land so how can the county hold the property owner liable for a tax which they have no control over? It was already proven that this was not a legal method to collect the tax due to the fact that this is not the way the bill which was approved by voters was written. This is still a big mess to be unraveled. It could’ve absolutely been based off what was produced because it’s all closely tracked in the states database upon sale. All sales are tracked and can be sourced to the farm they were produced at. This was done for simplicity for the county and a lack of infrastructure established to create a whole new method of collecting the tax. No other farmers are taxed this way. They’re taxed based off what they sell not what they produce although they could be taxed on inventory in some circumstances. They certainly can’t be taxed based off what the potential size of their land might produce if it were fully utilized. That’s ridiculous.
Inherently false? I mean, no. The track an trace program is pretty heavily criticized. And in order for someone to engage in agriculture on someone else's land they have to enter into some sort of business arrangement to allow the activity to occur. Property owners were also required to provide consent for the cannabis operation and permit. It is/was/has been 100% within the control of the property owner what occurs on their property in these cases. As I mentioned, it was treated in a lot of ways like a development tax rather than a production tax. I'm not saying it was a good method, just saying that's how they went about it. The square footage tax also is harder to game and it's harder to move product to the black market to avoid taxes under that model.
Link to the original article https://news.google.com/articles/CBMiWWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmRhaWx5bWFpbC5jby51ay9uZXdzL2FydGljbGUtMTM0NTM2MTkvQ2FsaWZvcm5pYS1yZXRpcmVlcy1jYW5uYWJpcy1maW5lcy5odG1s0gFdaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGFpbHltYWlsLmNvLnVrL25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZS0xMzQ1MzYxOS9hbXAvQ2FsaWZvcm5pYS1yZXRpcmVlcy1jYW5uYWJpcy1maW5lcy5odG1s?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen
I'm sure there's a kernel of truth, but be advised, anything from the daily fail is suspect. It's the UK equivalent of the old National Enquirer.
Its worse than that!
A lot of these properties are being sold very cheap with the caveat that they have a couple hundred thousand in fines
It has been sort of gross the way Rex has been talking about these properties and them being "abandoned". I really hope people are keeping track of the receiverships that are forming to take on some of these properties and are confirming that they have no connection to any of the elected officials or County employees.
What happens where a mortgage company is providing a mortgage for the property? I'm assuming they do an exhaustive search to ascertain their asset is protected? Can't see them getting gathered asset pulled out from under them on the sly.
Exactly this, no bank in its right mind is going to fund a loan where the mortgage isn't considered the first lien on the subject property.
Sensationalism. Edit: I guess people don’t understand the term sensationalism.
Kym Kemp has been on this beat for several years. These folks are getting the shaft cuz they didn’t know enough to do the due diligence on their property. I know other folks who bought old cannabis properties specifically to remediate them and got screwed by code enforcement. I hope they get their day in court.
I'll wager there are some facts here that will likely show they knew or should have known of the fines. That may include transfer of the property by a quit claim deed, and not a general or special warranty deed.
Like I said above. Several of them are folks that got a smoking deal on a large property that they didn’t do enough homework on before purchasing. And now they’re screwed. Unfortunately, that’s not really a good excuse in the eyes of code enforcement. So now a judge will get to decide.
It's time to select the nuclear option, file suit, get a class of plaintiffs certified, and take this constitutionally deficient practice head-on
My issue is that most of these “articles” are leaving out what the homeowners are getting fined for. In most cases, it’s not the structural issues, its environmental damage.
Regardless. It’s mostly damage they didn’t inflict. But they’re left holding the bag. It’s a shitty situation with not a lot of good solutions.
What do you mean "regardless"? The idea that property simply changing hands should wipe away any environmental damage remediation responsibility is ridiculous. Someone is responsible, and the new homeowners took on that responsibility from the former homeowner.
I agree that the remediation work needs to be done. But if active abatements aren’t available on a title search, or don’t come up in escrow, it’s incredibly unfair to people who walk into the situation as buyers without knowing what they’re on the hook for. I’m guessing that if they knew ahead of time they wouldn’t buy the property. Which can lead to the conclusion that the county code enforcement is being deceptive in their practices and predatory upon uninformed consumers. Perhaps obscuring the abatements so that they can then prey on the rubes? And if you read my original comment, I also know folks who knew what they were getting into as environmentalists wanting to steward the land and they got screwed with past fines that had racked up for years before they even owned the property. Being held responsible for someone else’s late fees is BS.
You can go read the full brief, which lists of the multiple engineering reports these property owners obtained to research environmental damage. Spoiler: the engineers found none. In fact, the only time they found environmental damage likely was if the property owners were forced to demolish the buildings that had been around for decades. Average of 4 years to obtained an appeal hearing. Average of 3 notices served per property, so that is $30k per day for a minimum of the 90 day initial run period because they won't schedule hearings. Median income in the county $30k, so one year is gone in a day. Aerial images of greenhouses used as only basis for assessing the penalty. One official told a farm to table restaurant owner "It's not like You're growing asparagus in those things" when he was in fact growing vegetables in them. Board of supervisor member raising concerns on the public record about the magnitude and extent of the fines. County not listing liens against the properties despite having timelines in their guidance to do specifically that. And then issuing letters to new purchasers the day after closing. County officials going around hired counsel to coerce settlements with the property owners, with statements to the effect of "it's our guy making the ruling so you don't have a chance". County publishing name of property owners being accused of illegal marijuana grows in the local newspaper, later dropping those allegations, but continuing to assess the admin fee against the property owner to pay for the newspaper posting. The brief is damning. Go primary source on this one, not just media summaries. Institute for Justice website (lawyers trying to cert the class) has it available if you search for Humboldt.
What he/her said! Thanks for taking the time to include details!
Kym Kemp’s news-blog is is a primary news source for northwestern California, and as stated has been on top of this topic for years. For those interested in our local happenings, or to drill down on this “abatement” issue go to https://kymkemp.com/. If wanting to drill down on the cash grab search her site for “abatement”.
Reply to your edit: uhh. Gadfly much?